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The
Region
Social and
Economic Life
Selective Immigration
The study found that early
immigration to the region was shaped by a combination of poor economic
conditions, the effects of the Riel Resistance of 1885 and the choice of many
potential settlers to move to the United States from eastern provinces.
Importantly, the Saskatchewan Land and Homestead Company had a retarding
influence on settlement. The SLHC exerted a profound and lingering regional
effect on land prices. As well, it affected the pattern of settlement in the Red
Deer-Lacombe corridor, deflecting many potential settlers outside of the
immediate region beyond the land holdings of the SLHC. As noted, the early
immigrants to the region were Canadian or British, while those arriving in the
1890's and after were mostly American. Many of the Americans arrived poorly
capitalized to establish a farm and often failed in this attempt. An attempt to
establish a Jewish agricultural colony near Pine Lake failed from destitution
that resulted partly by local failure to help the new settlers.
After this early period, a land rush occured in 1900-03 as many Canadians
returned from one or two decades in the American midwest. But along with this
return, the republican sensibilities that arrived with the Americans concerned
some who felt that the ideals of the earlier days in establishing a
quasi-religious colony of Methodists and the ties to imperial Britain were
diluted.
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